Liminality in Art
September 2, 2026 12:48 am
Liminality in Art is rarely still. We often imagine liminality as standing in a doorway between what was and what will be, but my experience tells me something different. Liminality moves. It sways, shifts, rises, falls, and continuously rearranges itself. We are never frozen in the threshold. We are always becoming. That realization found its way into my mobile, Suspended Becoming, which was on exhibit in the 45th Annual Michigan Fine Arts Juried Competition at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center from June 19 – August 13, 2026. Unlike many of my sculptures, Suspended Becoming quite literally lives in motion. Delicate forms hang from curved steel armatures, balancing one another while remaining responsive to the slightest movement in the air. Nothing is fixed. Every shift creates another relationship between the forms. Every moment offers a new composition.
Liminality in Art often emerges when the destination is unknown. When I began creating Suspended Becoming, I had no idea where it would lead. I was not trying to make experimental art or fit into a particular genre. I simply followed Intuition. One decision led naturally to another until the work became something I could never have imagined at the beginning. That, to me, is the gift of liminality. We often believe we need certainty before taking the next step. My experience has been the opposite. The greatest discoveries have come while wandering through uncertainty without forcing an outcome. As the sculpture unfolded, I found myself reflecting on what it means to trust a creative process that cannot be predicted. I still wonder whether Intuition guides me or whether I somehow guide it. The answer no longer feels important. What matters is remaining open long enough for something unexpected to emerge. Liminality in Art invites us to release who we think we should be long enough to discover who we actually are. That discovery rarely happens through planning alone. It happens by trusting the process, following unexpected paths, and allowing change to reshape us.
Suspended Becoming marks a personal threshold. For many years, I simply accepted that my work was different. My sense of composition, balance, color, and construction rarely aligned with conventional expectations. I often felt like an outlier, though I was not intentionally trying to be one. Recently, I have begun to embrace these differences rather than questioning them. This sculpture represents a moment of stepping more fully into my own creative identity. Looking at Suspended Becoming, I feel something deeper than satisfaction. I feel gratitude. The work became far more than I had hoped because I stopped trying to control where it was going. It reminds me that liminal spaces are not empty places to endure while waiting for certainty to arrive. They are active, creative places where transformation quietly unfolds.
Perhaps “becoming” itself is not the destination. Perhaps “becoming” is the way we live.
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